Elena
by kayleighjo312
Summary: Living in segregation and not fitting in anywhere Elena is isolated, lonely. Can love save her from herself? Or is the Insanity that took her mother, taking its hold of her too?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer - I do not own Harry Potter etc etc etc****  
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**Authors Note: I have most of this written but I'm not too sure about it. Please review if you like it (or not) because I am unsure whether I'll carry it on, thank you. I hope you enjoy.**

**Chapter 1**

**_1832_**- **_Nethton_**, **_Rural_** **_England_**

"They say when trouble comes, close ranks"

And so the Muggles did.

But we were not of their ranks. We we're of no-ones rank. The ladies of our village had never approved of my mother. "Because she pretty, like pretty self" Constance, my nanny, had once told me.

She had been my Father's second "wife" (legally, they could not marry), far too young for him they said, but worse still, a muggle girl. He was a distant memory now, died shortly after my brother, David's, birth.

My father had been a wealthy man; from a good wizard family. Our house had once been the grandest in the village. But he became a social outcast when he had married my mother; The Muggle.

During the late 1700's- feeling disempowered by wizards in the workforce and by the power that we held- the muggles implemented a policy of resettlement, forcing people to move to their designated group areas. Millions of people were relocated. Muggles were encouraged to taunt us, to treat us like second class citizens. All in the name of keeping us down. I had never known anything other than this mostly wizarding community we lived in, but amongst the elder generations the bitterness ran deep.

Once father had died, visitors became a thing of the past. Only neighboured by an old abandoned house, we were isolated. I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hoped- perhaps she needed to hope, as she saw her life whittle away each day as she peered into the looking glass. Still she rode to the village each day not caring that the people stood in groups, pointing and jeering. I did not understand it then. My mother shielded me and David from the worst of the abuse.

"They're just jealous" she would say "jealous that our house is the nicest and we are the richest."

But we were not rich, when he died, Father had left us dirt poor.

She was such a free spirit, my mother, always singing and dancing. Nobody could dance like her, her movement and rhythm were hypnotizing. Nothing ever seemed to wear her down. She was a beauty, her raven black hair fell in waves down her back and a few loose curls framed her porcelain face. I thought she was invincible.

Until the day that I saw ol' Flossie, my mothers horse, laying beneath the huge oak tree. She was dead. I heard mother and Constance later in the evening. Poison, it was a warning from the locals, for my muggle mother and me- her mutt child. It shook my mother but she did not let it show.

I had become used to the taunts from the Muggles but these folk were my kin. I could not comprehend it. But Wizard kind did not accept me as their own.

From that day on, I felt as if I were still a child, but grown. Like I knew more about the world around me. I admired my mother's resilience and vowed to remain strong just like her.

I started to leave the house more, play outside or down by the lake. The wizard children gave me wide berth and taunted me, but now their jeers just rolled off my back, like the water droplets when I'd step out of the freezing water.

Finally I felt freer.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Then came the day when everything I had ever known, suddenly changed.

David had been a sickly boy from birth. Now five, he walked with a stagger and could not speak distinctly. He was happy enough though, but mother thought not. She had persuaded a muggle doctor to visit him from one of the nearby towns. I was not permitted to be in the house during his visit, the doctor did not like wizards, even half ones.

Constance, too, was thrown out with me, we walked down the dirt path into the wilderness, in the near by forest. We stayed there for hours, just in case. She helped me with my magyk in the woods and we sang the sun down. We walked back well after nightfall, struggling to see our way.

Before we even reached the front door I could sense it, something terrible had happened.

I don't know what the doctor told her or what she said to him but he never came again and after that she changed.

Suddenly, not gradually, Mother grew thin and silent, and at last, she refused to leave the house at all.

Our garden was large and beautiful- like the garden of Eden. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach, not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Their scent was sweet and strong.

She would sit out there for hours, silently rocking David on her lap.

Passersby could see in, They stared, sometimes they laughed. Long after the sound was far away and faint, she kept her eyes shut and her hands clenched. A frown came between her black eyebrows, deep- it might have been cut with a knife.

I hated this frown and once I touched her forehead trying to smooth it. But she pushed me away, not roughly but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her. She wanted to sit with David or walk where she pleased without being pestered, she wanted peace and quiet.

I was old enough to look after myself.

'Oh, let me alone,' she would say, 'let me alone'.

I was a little afraid of her. So I spent most of my time in the kitchen which was in an outbuilding some way off. Constance slept in the little room next to it. When evening came she sang to me, if she was in the mood. I couldn't always understand her songs, but she taught me the one 'The little ones grow old, the children leave us, will they come back?' The music was cheery but the words were sad and her voice often quavered and broke on the high note.

The loving man was lonely, the girl was deserted, the children never came back.

Constance wore a black dress, heavy gold earrings and a yellow handkerchief ; carefully tied with the two high points in front- with thin straight features, she cut a formidable figure. She had a quiet voice and a quiet laugh (when she did laugh).

The girls from the village; who sometimes helped with the washing and cleaning- were terrified of her. That, I soon discovered, was why they came at all - for she never paid them. Yet they brought presents of fruit and vegetables and after dark I often heard low voices from the kitchen.

During one of my mothers few lucid moments, I plucked up the courage and asked about Constance. Was she very old? Had she always been with us?

'I don't know how old she was when she came to live with us, quite young. I don't know how old she is now. Does it matter? Why do you pester and bother me about all these things that happened long ago? Constance stayed with me when your father passed because she wanted to stay. I dare say we would have died if she'd turned against us and that would have been a better fate. To die and be forgotten and at peace. Not to know that one is abandoned, lied about, helpless'. She stared into nothingness as she finished

It was too hot that afternoon. I could see the beads of perspiration on her upper lip and the dark circles under her eyes. I started to fan her, but she turned her head away.

She might rest if I left her alone, she said.

Once I would have gone back quietly to watch her asleep on the blue sofa - once I made excuses to be near her when she brushed her hair, a soft black cloak to cover me, hide me, keep me safe.

But not any longer. Not any more.


End file.
